In a worldwide press release, researchers from ALERT and Indonesia today strongly criticized an Indonesian corporation — for using “deplorable” tactics to promote a project that would imperil the world’s rarest species of great ape.

The corporation, North Sumatera Hydro Energy (NSHE), is “pressuring and cajoling scientists, throwing money around to buy influence, making false statements, and now has hired a public relations firm specializing in corporate crisis management,” said ALERT director Bill Laurance.

“These tactics are simply deplorable.”

Ape in Danger

Only 800 individuals of the Tapanuli Orangutan — the rarest great ape on Earth — survive today, in a small tract of rainforest in northern Sumatra, Indonesia.

NSHE is planning a hydro-energy project that would cut across the ape’s habitat, reducing and fragmenting it, and thereby greatly increasing its vulnerability to illegal poaching, fires, deforestation, mining, and logging.

The hydro project — to be funded with more than $1.6 billion from Chinese lenders — is provoking wide and escalating criticism.

And today, the largest environmental group in Indonesia, WALHI, lodged a lawsuit against the North Sumatra government for approving the hydro scheme.

Knee-Jerk Reaction

In evident panic, NSHE has hired a public relations firm that specializes in corporate crisis management.

Using intense tactics, the PR firm is attempting to sway leading scientists — including those from ALERT — who hand-delivered a letter to Indonesian President Joko Widodo last month in opposition to the project.

“The PR firm is repeating falsehoods from the dam company and attempting to confuse the public,” said Onrizal Onrizal, a forestry scientist at the University of North Sumatra.

What the hydro corporation fears most, ALERT believes, is that key funders, especially the Bank of China, will withdraw their support for the project.

Belt & Road Disaster

Notably, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and the Asian Development Bank have refused to support the hydro project — largely on environmental grounds.

This is because the project would cut through some of the biologically richest rainforests on Earth, imperiling the Tapanuli Orangutan and many other threatened species, including the critically endangered Sumatran Tiger.

But Chinese financiers and Sinohydro, China’s national hydroelectric authority, have strongly backed the project to date.

China is the major driving force behind the Belt & Road Initiative, a global labyrinth of some 7,000 infrastructure and extractive-industry projects that will span much of the planet.

These projects will slice into many of the world’s remaining wild ecosystems, potentially opening them up like a flayed fish.

The hydro project in North Sumatra is part of the Belt & Road scheme. Chinese President Xi Jinping claims the Belt & Road will be “sustainable”, “circular,” and “low-carbon”, but the hydro project is turning into an acid test of those gentle words.

Right now, the Belt & Road is looking more like a global environmental crisis than anything else. The recent collapse of several massive Belt & Road projects in Malaysia is a signal that the scheme has intense dangers and vulnerabilities.

Decision Time

Scientists have been adamant in their conclusions about the hydro project in North Sumatra: it is an environmental disaster in the making, and should never have been approved in the first place.

But despite growing national and international condemnation, NSHE continues to push for the project — pulling out all the stops in a desperate bid to save it.

In any other nation, and with any other financiers, it is difficult to imagine a project like this advancing.

But in Indonesia, with abundant Chinese money behind the scenes, who can tell?

It just demonstrates that when big money is involved, some corporations will go to virtually any lengths to get what they want — even with the world’s top environmental experts uniformly telling them it is a terrible idea.

NSHE should be careful — it could end up with a globally toxic reputation — losing business, influence, assets, and market share.

Prospective financiers such as the Bank of China should run away from this hydro-nightmare and from NSHE — or they will be equally guilty of ringing a death knell for one of our closest living relatives.

There are, of course, many illegal threats — such as land invasions, mining, logging, and poaching happening inside protected areas.

But just as scary is a wide range of legal or quasi-legal dangers.

In Brazil, for instance, conservative President Michel Temer has tried to use legal tactics to open up the vast RENCA Reserve Network in eastern Amazonia for industrial mining — a plan that was only halted at the very last moment by a judge’s decree.

The Temer government also seems determined to shrink four other Amazonian parks and completely abolish a fifth reserve to open up new lands for miners.

Global Debate

Once considered almost inalienable, protected areas today are facing an array of legal threats collectively known as PADDD — “Protected Area Downgrading, Downsizing, and Degazettement.”

Downgrading occurs when a government weakens the legal status of a protected area, generally to allow activities such as mining, logging, or wildlife harvesting.

Global Problem

PADDD is becoming a global crisis.

Even World Heritage Sites — supposedly the pinnacle of Earth's protected areas — are feeling the bite. For example, the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania, a famous World Heritage Area, was shrunk in 2012 to allow a massive uranium mine.

In 2011, Cambodia carved out a section of its largest national park — Virachey — to build a vast rubber plantation. At the time, a government official defended the decision with an Orwellian statement: “It is not against the law when the government approves it.”

And it's not just developing nations that are pushing PADDD.

In the U.S., the Trump Administration slashed 85 percent of Bears Ears Monument in Utah — an area of great cultural, geological, and environmental importance.

And last year, Australia’s federal government proposed what WWF called “the largest protected area downgrading in the world” when it announced that it wanted to allow commercial fishing in nearly half a million square kilometers of marine parks.

Beware of Conservative Governments

PADDD events can happen under any government, but appear more likely under conservative ones.

They also appear to be increasing. In our age of ever-expanding human populations and the ceaseless drive for resources, this is hardly surprising.

But in the face of climate change, mass extinction, and habitat degradation, protected areas are more essential than at any time before. They are one of our most vital tools to stop ecological meltdown.

The best way to fight PADDD is through public activism. Protests, marches, and international criticism have saved protected areas from New Zealand to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We all want to believe our protected areas are actually being protected. But they are being attacked, dissected, and eroded every day.

The lesson for us is simple: Conservation won’t succeed without protected areas, and protected areas won’t survive without our constant vigilance.

Jeremy Hance is a leading environmental journalist and frequent contributor to ALERT.

It is vital, however, to realize that such technologies, while useful, are far from sufficient to ensure that China’s unprecedented schemes will be environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable (see here, here, and here).

JUGGERNAUT

The world has never seen a development force like China: one that has a powerfully centralized leadership, is intensely ambitious internationally, lacks many of the internal safeguards provided by an open media, and is the world’s most populous nation (with over 1.4 billion people).

Chinese President Xi Jinping has worked hard to ensure that his One Belt One Road initiatives are formally inscribed into China’s national constitution, effectively making it a crime for a Chinese national to criticize the program — comparable to openly disparaging the Central Communist Party.

To make matters worse, China is mesmerized by its own propaganda: Out of 179 ranked nations worldwide, China is virtually at the bottom (176th) in terms of the openness of its public media.

Hence, what a typical Chinese citizen sees, hears, and evidently often believes is essentially pro-government advocacy and self-aggrandizement — partly because of President Xi’s continuing crackdowns on social media and public discussion.

Beyond this, China is such a massive nation that it tends, like other populous countries, to be unusually self-absorbed and self-justifying in nature.

And China wants to believe its own propaganda. That it routinely reacts with hostility and condemnation to external criticism should ring alarm bells globally.

GLOBAL EXPANSIONISM

Such nerve-wracking behavior would be less worrying were China’s model for economic and political growth not so profoundly based on global expansionism — via staggering investments in infrastructure and mining, timber, and other extractive industries that will have extraordinary ripple effects across ecosystems, societies, and economies.

Scientists working in developing nations often remark that China’s entrepreneurs and foreign investors are intensely hard-charging, hard-edged, and willing to ‘bend or break rules’ as required to achieve their aims.

Typically, such approaches are far more predatory than fair and equitable for the citizens and environments of developing nations.

To be fair, China is making impressive strides against some of its pressing internal environmental concerns, via programs aimed at replanting denuded lands, promoting solar and wind energy, and reducing air pollution, among others.

However, thanks partly to the U.S. Trump Administration’s short-sighted isolationism, China is rolling out international programs of such audacity and scope that they would be almost unimaginable in a more balanced world.

China’s leading scientists are smart and keen to collaborate internationally, but they are a lonely signpost urging “caution” against the rolling juggernaut of Chinese political, business, and financial interests that are massively expanding their foreign activities.

The hard reality boils down to this: While its political leaders try to silence international anxieties, China is so big and propelled by self-interest that it only wants to listen to itself.

Unfortunately, beyond devastating native ecosystems, the mega-fires are destroying the villages, farming plots, and livestock of traditional local peoples. Local rage against the invaders has peaked as several village residents were killed by the intense, unexpected fires.

Studies in Zimbabwe, Africa show that mega-fires are being lit by gangs of lawless young men, who do not live locally.

Roads to Ruin

Many of these roads are being made by loggers and miners, operativing legally or illegally.

In the rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon, a study by ALERT researchers found alarmingly high numbers of illegal roads. Across the region, there were about three kilometers of illegal roads for every one kilometer of legal road.

The Convention on Biological Diversity stresses the importance of Environmental Impact Assessments to identify the risks and side-effects from transport infrastructure projects.

Clearly such protections aren't working, at least not in Equatorial Africa.

Before punching new roads into forested areas, governments need to establish new protected areas, strengthen law enforcement in existing protected areas, and increase sustainable-livelihood opportunities.

Eyes in the Sky

In Africa, a small number of rangers are trying to protect vast areas of rainforest, and real-time data from satellites could be a huge help to them in trying to locate all the threats.

But it takes more than good data -- we also need much stronger law enforcement and support for nature and cultural conservation on the ground.

We need to understand how fast things are changing, or Africa's rainforests will soon be decimated, to the benefit of very few.

There is no time to be lost. To quote Harvard Biologist E. O. Wilson, “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom."

Ecuador

In Ecuador, Protected Forests (Bosques Protectores) are increasingly being handed over to mining interests, with no environmental research or consultation with indigenous or local communities.

Analyses by John Seed and others indicate that mining concessions now span nearly 3.7 million hectares in Ecuador — an eighth of the national land area, collectively exceeding in size the nation of Japan.

And the mining tsunami is sweeping right into Ecuador’s protected areas.

Overall, 30% of all Protected Forests in Ecuador are now in mining concessions. Of these, 27 Protected Forests will lose over half of their area to mining, and 15 will lose over 90% of their area.

The impacts on biodiversity are frightening. For example, more than 1 million hectares of the best bird habitat in Ecuador — a global hotspot for biodiversity — are now under mining concessions.

Notably, the Congressional Committee considering legislation to open up the RENCA is receiving massive campaign contributions from Vale, one of the world’s biggest mining corporations.

Just as is happening in the RENCA, protected areas in Brazil have been attacked again and again by changing their legal classification (see here, here, here, here and here).

In most cases, the vulnerable protected areas are those that overlay mining claims (see here, here, here, and here).

Opening up the RENCA will change the Amazon irrevocably — creating huge industrial mines as well as networks of new roads — which in turn provide avenues for forest invasions, land theft, illicit logging, and illegal gold mining.

In Brazil as in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and far beyond, aggressive miners and the lethal spider-webs of roads they bulldoze are opening up far larger areas of forest for exploitation and destruction.

Mining, logging, agribusiness, and wildlife poaching are the four biggest killers of conservationists, according to the advocacy group Global Witness.

In total, those four activities accounted for nearly 100 deaths of nature defenders, most of whom were murdered.

DEADLY AMAZON

Overall, the Amazon is the most dangerous place to be a conservationist, with at least 49 deaths in 2016. Most of these are attributed to murders by loggers and landowners.

Memorably, it was the murder in 2005 of a Catholic nun, Dorothy Stang, that so enraged Brazilians that President Lula was forced to send the Army into the Amazon.

Stang had been helping local and indigenous peoples in the Amazon to stand up to illegal land theft by wealthy cattle ranchers and land speculators.

One of those ranchers hired two hit-men to track down and murder Stang. They shot her six times.

In many peoples’ eyes, it was the death of Stang that final signaled ‘enough’ to Brazilians.

Her death revealed the growing human cost of illegal logging, land theft, and other illicit activities in the Amazon, which at that point were running rampant. It wasn’t just nature that was suffering, but lots of people too.

MORE ATTACKS

The attacks on nature are taking other forms as well.

In Brazil, the government of president Michel Temer is rapidly becoming notorious for its assaults on nature conservation.

As detailed in previous ALERT blogs (see herehere, here, and here), Brazil’s environment has been reeling from political attacks instigated by Temer and conservative members of the Brazilian congress.

Among other activities, the conservatives are striving to reduce the size of Amazonian protected areas while favoring illegal land-grabs and weakening a range of environmental laws.

And the risks to conservation aren’t limited to developing nations.

ASSAULTS DOWN UNDER

In Australia, ominous signs are emerging that environmental groups might lose their tax-free status — at least if the present conservative government has its way.

Nature-conservation groups, which operate on notoriously thin budgets, are cringing at the thought.

Much of the pressure is being brought to bear by Australia’s powerful mining industry, and the politicians it supports.

Mining corporations in Australia routinely spend tens of millions of dollars each year on political lobbying.

Using a giant media blitz, these powerful corporations even managed, in effect, to overthrow a former Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, in 2010.

Rudd had proposed to bring in a tax on mining “super-profits” — both to help balance the Australian economy and fund initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Today, the big miners want to hamstring their pro-environmental opponents by attacking their meager funding base.

KEEP FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT

And so it goes.

Being a conservationist in the modern world is not easy, nor is it lucrative.

And because of its many powerful and wealthy opponents, it seems to be getting rougher and even more physically dangerous every year.

But there’s no time to get discouraged. Despite being beleaguered and underfunded, conservationists are still winning lots of battles (for example, see here, here, and here).

Without environmental laws we'd all be breathing polluted air, drinking foul water, and living in a perpetual silent spring -- where nature and wildlife had long ago vanished.

Yet those very same laws that keep our world livable are under assault. Nearly everywhere one looks, environmental regulations and their enforcement are being rolled back, eroded, or just plain ignored.

A recent analysis by Guillaume Chapron and colleagues reveals the growing tide of assaults on environmental laws worldwide and the staggering diversity of tactics being employed. If nothing else, it illustrates the creativity of those who seek short-term profits at the expense of nature.

(c) Nick Kim

Taxonomy of Tactics

The array of assaults on environmental protections is so diverse that Chapron and colleagues ended up devising a "taxonomy" simply to categorize them all. And in an effort to stay abreast of all the nefariousness, they have set up a public database to list the attempts.

Here is a quick snapshot of skulduggery -- a laundry list of ongoing efforts to undercut environmental legislation at the expense of the Earth:

Endangered Species?

Species staring at the abyss of extinction are protected, right? Nope, at least not in the western U.S. states of Idaho and Montana. There, gray wolves -- an endangered species -- can be gunned down if they dare to stray outside of official wilderness areas.

And in Western Australia, an endangered species can actually be driven to extinction if the Environment Minister orders it and Parliament approves it.

Bolster Biodiversity?

Biodiversity is important, right? Not in Canada. There, native fish species that don't have economic or recreational value don't get any legal protection from serious harm.

And in France, shooting migratory birds is illegal. But migrating birds get shot out of the sky anyway because the environment minister has ordered that the law not be enforced.

(c) Nick Kim

Dilute Protections

In South Africa, the environment minister formerly had authority to limit environmental damage and oversee ecological restoration on mining sites. Not any more. That power has been handed over to the mining minister -- who, not surprisingly, is a lot less finicky about environmental stuff.

And in Brazil, the famous Forest Code that has helped to reduce deforestation rates has been seriously watered down. Safeguards for forests along waterways and on hillsides have been weakened, and landowners that illegally fell forests no longer have to replant them.

Forget Climate Change

Worried about climate change? Not in the U.S. Proposed legislation there (U.S. S3071) would prohibit the government from considering climate change as a threat to any species.

Shoot the Messengers

And in many parts of the world, those who dare to criticize sinning corporations are getting hit with SLAPP suits -- strategic lawsuits against public participation. In Peru, for instance, a corporation that was mowing down rainforest to grow 'sustainable' cacao for making chocolate used lawsuits and heavy legal threats to intimidate anyone who dared to decry it.

Take-Home Message

You can't make some of this stuff up -- and the examples above are only scratching the surface.

Around the world, the laws and regulations that have been established to protect nature are being conveniently downsized, diminished, swept under the carpet, and ignored.

But don't get depressed -- get mad. Make some noise. Yell at your legislators. Organize a boycott.

It does make a difference. Those who are weakening environmental protections can only get away with it if we let them. They'll usually back down -- if we bellow loud enough.

Jeremy Hance, a leading environmental journalist and ALERT contributor, has some pithy thoughts about the ways we treat corporations today.

At an Eco-Business event in Singapore in February, a corporate CEO rocked the audience by pointing out the environmental equivalent of the Emperor having no clothes.

He argued that, despite all the hoopla over “sustainability” in recent decades, financial markets around the world do almost nothing to reward corporate progress on the environment.

Is the CEO right? Are we failing to punish corporate sinners and reward the good guys?

Critical Question

One complication is that “sustainability” has become a buzzword—used so often and broadly that it’s lost much of its meaning, diluted by corporations and governments eager to jump on the green bandwagon.

Such confusion aside, at least some conscientious companies are being rewarded by the financial markets.

For example, a 2014 study found that corporations listed on the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index—which tracks the performance of the biggest U.S. companies—were apparently rewarded for their sustainability efforts. On average, companies trying to reduce climate change received 18 percent more return on their investment than did those that did not.

But there are also cases where companies trying to do the right thing are apparently being punished by investors, or at least not rewarded.

Indeed, some of the worst corporations on the planet are getting richer. Recent research shows that environmental black-hats such as Chevron and Exxon Mobil have been raking in cash—with stock valuations rising by hundreds of percent in recent decades.

Despite using a tiger for its logo, Malaysia's Maybank is considered one of the world's worst forest-destroying financial institutions.

And many highly profitable Chinese companies and state-owned enterprises have been bad corporate citizens, often treating developing nations as “pollution havens” where they wreak environmental havoc, according to a major World Bank study.

The blackest of all black hats are worn by the coal industry—and there the message is a mixed bag. Coal giants like Peabody Energy have seen their stocks collapse. But Australian coal giant BHP Billiton has seen its stock triple since 2000, albeit with lots of ups and downs.

Mixed Signals

Such mixed signals prove one thing: There is no overriding force in the global market pushing companies toward more-sustainable efforts. Good guys are getting rewarded in some cases but not in others.

What should we do?

For starters, we need to keep the pressure up on industries that have big impacts on the environment—including agriculture, fossil fuels, mining, forestry, fisheries, and infrastructure construction. Such industries need close and continuous scrutiny.

We must also keep pushing to divest—to force our universities and other institutions to put their money where their mouths are, and favor eco-friendly corporations and industries.

And finally, we need better laws and enforcement. Putting a real price on carbon emissions, for instance, would immediately transform the unfair economic logic that allows eco-sinners to make more profits than eco-winners.

Bottom line: The CEO in Singapore is partly wrong: environmentally conscientious investors are making a positive difference in the world today.

But the CEO is also partly right: we need to do a lot more.

Corporations are smart. They’ll only become truly sustainable once they taste the carrots we are offering them to behave well, or feel the sticks we're smacking on their backs when they behave badly.

That’s because development pressures never cease—even for the planet’s most critical ecosystems.

For example, ALERT recently reported good news for the Leuser Ecosystem in northern Sumatra, Indonesia—a renowned World Heritage Area and the last place on Earth where tigers, orangutans, elephants, and rhinos still survive together.

Irwandi Yusuf, the governor-elect for Aceh Province in Sumatra, said he would personally halt a major geothermal plant proposed by a Turkish corporation that would be constructed right in the heart of the Leuser wilderness.

But wait—that battle isn’t won yet. Behind the scenes, the Turkish firm is now pressing the Indonesian government to fast-track the project, before Irwandi becomes governor.

Roads to Ruin

The Turkish geothermal plant isn’t the only danger to Leuser—several big hydropower projects are being proposed and other developments too.

These projects could shatter the Leuser wilderness, slicing up large expanses of the forest with powerlines and roads.

The roads would open a Pandora’s box of perils—bringing poachers armed with snares and rifles to hunt rare wildlife.

A snared tiger--that later died (Image (c) WWF)

The roads would also bring illegal miners, loggers, and encroachers that bulldoze, burn, and fragment the forest.

And as the forest is stripped away, streams are polluted and destructive flooding increases downstream for villages and farmers.

Illegal gold miners ravage a river in central Sumatra (photo by Bill Laurance)

Decision Time

Indonesia’s Minister for Environment and Forestry, Dr Siti Nurbaya, has previously fought for the Leuser Ecosystem, and visited Aceh last year to publicly declare a moratorium on new oil palm and mining leases in Leuser.

Minister Siti has also been active in opposing actions that defy environmental laws laid down by Indonesian President Joko Widodo—laws to combat illegal wildfires, mining, and other threats while reducing the noxious haze that has chronically blanketed much of Southeast Asia.

But now it’s decision time. On the one hand, Indonesia needs social and economic development—no one disputes that. But on the other hand, the Leuser Ecosystem is unique—arguably Indonesia’s most important protected area, a key tourist attraction and an international icon.

Ongoing deforestation in the Leuser Ecosystem

Will Minister Siti and President Widodo battle again for Leuser?

It won’t be easy. Powerful forces are in play—big corporations driving to exploit the forest immediately and irrevocably.

On the back of such decisions, global reputations can be forged and national prestige won or lost.

Whatever happens, lots of Indonesians and many other people around the world will be keenly watching—with one eye open even while we sleep.

Not many places left to hide for Sumatra's elephants (image (c) Gudkov Andrey)

No animal on Earth can run faster than the Cheetah. But like a lot of African wildlife, Cheetahs are struggling to outpace the yawning abyss of extinction.

Widespread Decline

A new study in the leading journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, suggests that Cheetah numbers in the wild have collapsed to just 7,100 individuals. That's down from around 100,000 animals at the end of the 19th century.

Led by Sarah Durant of the Zoological Society of London, the study concludes that of 18 wild Cheetah populations still surviving in Africa, 14 are in decline.

In just the past 16 years, for instance, the number of Cheetahs in Zimbabwe has collapsed from 1,200 to just 170 animals.

Cheetahs today are estimated to survive in just 9 percent of their historic geographic range. In addition to Africa, Iran also has a tiny population of Cheetahs still clinging to survival.

Genetic Variation

Such dramatic declines in population size and geographic range are particularly worrying given the Cheetah's notable lack of genetic variation, which apparently resulted from a severe population bottleneck of the species around 10,000 years ago.

The intense inbreeding and genetic drift robbed Cheetahs of genetic variation -- making them virtual clones of one another -- and have resulted in a spate of genetic problems. Poor sperm quality, palate problems, susceptibility to infectious diseases, and kinked tails are all evident in Cheetahs today.

Perils to African Wildlife

The authors of the recent study suggest that the large spatial requirements of Cheetahs and the complex spate of threats they face -- from habitat loss and fragmentation to poaching and declining prey numbers -- make them a challenging species to conserve.

The most urgent recommendation, say the authors, is to officially list the Cheetah as an Endangered Species. It is currently listed as Vulnerable.

Notably, researchers in Africa have recently argued that Giraffes merit much higher conservation status because their populations are also plummeting. That's along with other famously imperiled African species such as Elephants, Rhinos, and Gorillas.

We’ve mistakenly taken the world’s tallest mammal for granted — fretting far more about other beloved mega-fauna such as rhinos, elephants, and great apes.

But now it seems that all is not well in giraffe-land. Thanks to molecular genetics, we’ve just realised that what we thought was one species of giraffe is in fact four species, divided into various distinctive subspecies. That’s a lot more biodiversity to worry about.

Even more disturbing is that giraffe populations are collapsing. Once roaming widely across Africa’s savannas and woodlands, they now occupy less than half of the real estate they did a century ago.

Even where they still persist, giraffe populations are increasingly sparse and fragmented. Their numbers have fallen by 40 percent in just the last two decades, and they’ve disappeared entirely from seven African countries.

Tall Challenges

Giraffes today are getting hit from all sides. Africa’s population is growing so fast it could quadruple this century. And all those additional people are using lots more land for farming, livestock, and burgeoning cities.

Woodland clearing in the Okavango Delta of Botswana.

Beyond this, Africa has become a feeding ground for foreign corporations, especially big mining firms from China, India, Canada, Australia, and other nations. To export bulk commodities such as iron, copper and aluminium ore, China in particular has gone on a frenzy of road, railway, and port building.

Fueled by the flood of foreign currency, Africa’s infrastructure is booming. For instance, a total of 33 ‘development corridors’ — centered around ambitious highway and rail networks — have been proposed or are under active construction.

'Development corridors' in sub-Saharan Africa, ranked by the conservation importance of habitats that would be impacted by the corridor.

Research led by ALERT director Bill Laurance shows that these projects would total over 53,000 kilometers in length, crisscrossing the continent and opening up vast expanses of remote, biologically rich ecosystems to new development pressures.

In addition, giraffes are plagued by poachers with powerful automatic rifles. As shown in this poignant video, giraffes are commonly killed merely for their tails — which are valued as a status symbol and dowry gift by some African cultures.

Time to Act

The sweeping decline of giraffes reflects wider trends in wildlife populations. A recent report by WWF projects that we could lose two-thirds of all individual birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fish on Earth by 2020. Species in tropical nations are doing especially poorly.

What are we to do? A critical first step is to help African nations to develop their natural resources and economies in ways that don’t decimate nature.

Environmental journalist Jeremy Hance, a regular contributor to ALERT, tells us about the holocaust of hunting in Southeast Asia -- and what could be done to save imperiled species.

The famed author Rachel Carson warned of a “Silent Spring” in her most famous work, but in Southeast Asia it’s the forests that have gone silent.

A new study in Conservation Biology argues that overhunting is actually a bigger peril to the region’s wildlife than deforestation, despite the fact that countries in Southeast Asia have some of the highest deforestation rates on the planet.

POACHING EPIDEMIC

The research, headed by Rhett Harrison with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, describes a poaching epidemic that has spread across Southeast Asia during the past 30 years, reaching even the most remote places and protected areas.

Poaching, Harrison and colleagues argue, is working its way down the wildlife hierarchy -- with large species being wiped out first, following by the progressive demise of smaller animals.

Known as defaunation, many forests in Southeast Asia today sustain nothing larger than small birds and squirrels. Earlier research had suggested that just 1 percent of the region's forests supports mammals over 20 kilograms in weight, but Harrison's team asserts that the situation is even more dire than that.

Large wildlife such as this Malayan Tapir are becoming vanishingly rare across much of Southeast Asia.

With few animals, Southeast Asia’s forests will increasingly become ecologically impoverished. Many tree species in the tropics depend on fruit-eating birds and mammals for seed dispersal. If pushed to local extinction, these animals could eventually take their dependent tree species with them, impacting everything from carbon storage to insect diversity.

HOW HAS THIS HAPPENED?

Hunters in Southeast Asia are generally not killing animals for subsistence; they won’t starve if they don’t hunt. Instead, they are shooting or snaring animals for recreation, cultural reasons, or to make a little extra money, according to the study.

Hunting in the region is also usually opportunistic. Southeast Asian hunters aren’t necessary walking into the woods looking for a single species, such as a wild pig or deer. Instead, they will often kill whatever they can eat or sell; this includes everything from freshwater turtles to small birds to big animals such as deer and tapir.

The widespread use of snares exacerbates his opportunistic, kill-whatever-comes-along approach. Snares are random killers, maiming whatever animal steps in them. Snares have been called “the landmines of the forest” and are common across the region, especially in countries that have strict gun laws.

A young tiger caught in a poacher's snare.

Culture also plays a role. Many wild animals in Southeast Asia are considered delicacies or are thought to have medicinal values. And many people in the region would rather eat wild than domestic meat. In some countries, the ability to buy wild species raises one’s social status.

Harrison and his team contend that the bulk of hunting in Southeast Asia is actually for domestic consumption, rather than international trade. Sure, some animals are transported from rural areas to nearby cities, but most are not going over borders.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t professional poachers targeting animals such as tigers or pangolins for international trade. But the authors assert that the bulk of hunting is by rural people looking to bring something wild home or to sell in the local market.

NO FOREST TOO REMOTE

All this is occurring at a time when infrastructure and other development projects have bulldozed into most of the remote forests of Southeast Asia.

While road building in rainforests has long been criticized for promoting deforestation, it also creates much greater access to forests for hunters.

In Southeast Asia, new highways, logging roads, and plantation roads have infiltrated many remote areas and are allowing easy access for anyone with a motorbike. Large infrastructure and commercial projects –- such as dams, mines, and plantations –- are also bringing workers into remote areas.

Recent research has shown that Earth's forests are not only shrinking but also becoming increasingly fragmented and infiltrated by people. Core forests are vanishing, in large part from rampant road building and other infrastructure projects.

Experts estimate that by 2050, nearly 25 million kilometers of paved roads will be added to our already road-ravaged world. We'll see 60 percent more roads than we had in 2010, mostly in developing nations with high biodiversity and numerous endangered species.

An Indian rhino killed by poachers for its horn.

In Southeast Asia, population growth is also increasing pressure on declining wildlife. Harrison and his team found that human population density was the biggest determinant of local hunting pressure in rural areas.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

Harrison and his team lament that international organizations have not seemed to grasp the scale of the overhunting crisis in Southeast Asia. If they did, they say, potential solutions are available.

First, they recommend a renewed focus on securing and better managing protected areas in the region, instead of pushing for more parks.

Second, they say governments and conservationists should work with hunters -- instead of fighting against them. Hunting is outlawed in many countries, technically making anyone who takes a shotgun or snare into the wild a criminal. This hard-line stance might seem desirable to some, but the authors say it stops conservationists and hunters from working together.

Instead, the researchers say that allowing the exploitation of species that can withstand some hunting pressure -- such as wild pigs, certain small ungulates, bamboo rats, squirrels, common civets, and some birds -- could help bring conservationists and hunters together to reduce the pressure on more-vulnerable species.

Traditional Penan hunter-gatherers in Sarawak, Borneo.

Other solutions -– such as education programs, stiffer penalties for poachers of endangered species, and community conservation -– could also help turn the tide.

The research team's bottom line: To save Southeast Asia's wildlife from the gun and the snare, we need better strategies and more resources from governments and conservationists.

The Sumatran tiger is one of the rarest animals on Earth, with only a few hundred individuals estimated to survive today. Perhaps its greatest stronghold is Kerinci Seblat National Park in the mountains of western Sumatra — the largest park on the island.

And shockingly, the government of Jambi Province wants to punch a series of roads right into the heart of the park.

Biological Jewel

Why imperil one of Earth’s greatest biological jewels? The government is using the excuse that the roads are needed for ‘emergency’ evacuation in case Mount Kerinci — an active volcano that periodically belches smoke and ash — should happen to erupt.

However, very few people live near Mount Kerinci. The closest villages are at least 8 kilometers from the base of the mountain, according to experts from Flora & Fauna International.

But that doesn’t matter to the local government. In late 2013, Mount Sinabung in northern Sumatra erupted. And although the government had imposed a 7-kilometer exclusion zone around the volcano, farmers illegally encoached deep into the zone. When the volcano erupted, 16 people were killed.

Roads to Ruin

Punching roads into Kerinci Seblat would be a disaster not just for Sumatran tigers but also for the park’s other wildlife, which is among the richest on Earth.

Notably, the park formerly including the critically imperiled Sumatran rhinoceros, a species even more imperiled than the Sumatran tiger. But, tragically, the rhinos have been completely poached out of the park.

Roads would surely bring more poachers and illegal loggers, farmers, and miners into the area. Poaching is already taking a terrible toll on Sumatran tigers, as reported recently in ALERT.

For an animal that is this critically endangered, even limited poaching can be lethal — and that is happening already. How much worse would it get if the tiger’s best stronghold is breached?